


Like Us

by ariel2me



Series: Orys/Argella [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1408321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for gameofshipschallenges on Tumblr, for the prompt Murder. </p><p>"Tell me, Argella, how does it feel to be married to your father’s slayer?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Us

A/N: A companion piece to [ _This House of Sorrow, This House of Solitude._](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1144535) This one is from Argella’s POV.

_______________________________

Orys wrote to her that he was ‘ _coming home’_. Argella read those two words and scoffed, in the privacy of her bedchamber.

_This is my home. Not yours. Stay in King’s Landing with your king, your closest companion. Leave us in peace._

She would never say this to Orys, of course. Or to anyone else. As far as the world was concerned, Argella Durrendon had made her peace with her losses – the crown, the father, the stormlands. Had made her peace with merely being the Lady of Storm’s End, not the Storm Queen, as was her birthright. Had made her peace with being married to the man who –

It was not murder. Her father was killed in battle, during a war.

Yet the thought persisted. Orys’ hands on the sword that delivered the mortal blow. Orys’ bloody sword, drenched with her father’s blood. Orys’ shout – “ _for Aegon!”_ – as he delivered the final strike that fell Argilac Durrendon, the last of the Storm King.

What right did Orys have to wage war on the stormlands? He did it for his king, he claimed. For his half-brother. But what right did Aegon Targaryen have to wage war in Westeros in the first place?

No, it _was_ murder.

When she looked at her husband’s face, she saw only her father’s blood.  

_Tell me, Argella, how does it feel to be married to your father’s slayer?_

_I did not have a choice! I was a prisoner, spoils of war, betrayed by own men._

Betrayed by her own ladies as well.

The castle would protect them, she had believed at the time. This was Storm’s End after all, Durran Godsgrief act of defiance against the gods. Even the gods at the height of their wrath and fury could not destroy the castle.

“My princess, we must flee to safety. They are coming,” her ladies pleaded.

 “Queen. I am the Storm Queen now,” Argella reminded them.

“Before the king left for battle, he made it clear, Princess Argella. Should he fall in battle, we are to bend the knee to the enemy. For your sake. To protect you, my princess.” It was the lords again, buzzing, screeching, insistent.

 _The king is dead, you fool!_ _You did not protect my father then, why should I believe that you intend to protect me now?_

The castle would protect them. _Bar the gates, bar the doors, bar the windows, bar everything._ The enemy must never be allowed to enter. Her father’s slayer must never be allowed to set foot inside Storm’s End.

“My father would never have said such a thing. He would never consider surrender. Never!”

Her father who had gone to his death rather than bending the knee. Argilac the Storm King who rode out proudly to meet his enemy. He would have wanted her to continue the fight, to defy the enemy. Durrendons had been Storm Kings for hundreds of years. They would not be broken by some upjumped pretender from a barren, rocky wasteland. Even one with dragons.

When they came for her, understanding came a moment too late. ‘ _They_ ’ were not the enemies she had been preparing herself for, but her own people. Her ladies were complicit. The lords were the ones with the shouted threats and the knife on her throat, but her ladies were the ones forcefully stripping Argella naked, the ones putting the chains strangling her feet and her hands. Even the women who had been like a mother to her, like a sister. Like the mother she never knew, and the sister she never had.

“I have sons, my princess,” one of them whispered, tears streaming down her face. “I have lost two of them already in the fighting. I cannot lose the others. I’m sorry. This is the only way. If only you had listened to your lords, it would not have come to this.

“Mother, tell me the rest of the story.” Steffon’s voice was impatient, but his gaze, staring out from eyes that looked disturbingly so like Orys’ eyes, was bright-eyed and animated.

 _The Storm Queen married the dragon’s bastard, spread her legs for_ _her own father’s murderer, and then they lived unhappily ever after._

“When the storm came and battered the castle, Elenei shielded Durran with her own body,” Argella told her son.

“This castle? _Our_ castle?”

“No, it was a different one. Storm’s End had not been built yet at the time.”

“Why were the gods angry at Durran, Mother?”

_Because he dared to show the gods they could be just as clueless and as powerless as a mere mortal._

“He married their daughter without their permission,” Argella replied.

“Was she a god too, the daughter?”

“She was, but when she married Durran, she became mortal.”

“Mortal? What’s that?”

“She became … like us. Human. Like you and me.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Steffon said, snuggling closer to his mother. “Like us is not so bad. I like being you and me.”

Argella smiled. “Me too.”

She had carried this child inside her for nine months, haunted by her father’s anger and sorrow the whole time.

_How could you carry his child? My murderer’s child._

Her father’s ghost haunted her still.

_How could you love his child? My murderer’s child._

_This child is mine. Your grandson, Father. Orys sees him once or twice a year, on his rare visits to Storm’s End. He is too busy serving that pretender calling himself king of the Seven Kingdoms._

“Your father is coming home,” Argella whispered to her boy. Steffon nodded, looking anxious.  “You must welcome him home, and tell him how glad you are to see him,” Argella continued. Appearances must be maintained at all times. She had learned that the hard way. Orys must never be allowed to suspect that his son barely thought of him from one minute to the next, that his son thought of his father as he would a stranger. Orys might wish to spend more time at Storm’s End if he suspected that, or worse still, he might decide to take the boy to King’s Landing with him.

Orys came home to Storm’s End with a troubled face, a fevered brow, and a heavy sigh. His sudden weakness enraged her. Her father’s murderer was supposed to be strong, willful, determined, and he should always be so, for how could Argilac Durrendon have been felled by this creature who looked like a stray dog looking for a lost home? It was absurd. She would not accept it. She would not allow it.

“Is anything the matter?” She asked Orys, quietly, when all she wanted to do was to scream – “ _get a hold of yourself!_ ”

He told her nothing. But then again, she told him nothing that truly mattered as well, so how could she blame him for his silence?

He slept and slept, dead to the world, oblivious to his son, his wife. A servant whispered to Argella at the dinner table, “Lord Baratheon is ill, my lady. He is muttering in his sleep, and his skin is very hot to the touch.”

“Fetch the maester,”Argella commanded. If Orys died in her bed, his half-brother, the pretender dragon king would certainly find a way to blame Argella for it. “ _He came home already ailing_ ,” was not an excuse likely to calm Aegon Targaryen.

“The maester is not in the castle, my lady. He is attending to a breech birth. Should I send someone to fetch him?”

“Not yet. I will go to Lord Baratheon myself,” Argella decided.

 _Aegon_ , Orys was muttering in his sleep. _Wait for me._

Of course, Argella thought. Even his dreams were of his precious king, that pretender king.

_Do you ever dream of my father, Orys? Or have you forgotten him completely, merely another notch on your belt, another enemy vanquished, all for the sake of your king?_

“Your father fought bravely, my lady. There is no shame in his defeat,” he had told her, when he was trying to convince her to drink the wine he was holding to her lips. She had not needed much convincing, in truth. Her disloyal, traitorous men had kept her naked, chained up without food and water for almost a day before dumping her on Orys Baratheon’s feet as he walked into Storm’s End easily and unopposed.

She would despise herself for a long time for gratefully accepting that sip of wine.

The cloak he had covered her naked flesh with, on the other hand, she accepted as her due as the rightful queen. They had stripped her naked to humiliate her, to diminish her to nothing in the eyes of her people. Orys had looked angry.

“Was this really necessary? You could not subdue one woman without stripping her and putting her in chains?”

But she was not just _any_ woman. She was the last Storm Queen.  

His pity enraged her. _How dare you? Who are you to pity me?_

His pity saved her life. And she _wanted_ to live, didn’t she?

But his greatest betrayal came on their wedding night, when he suddenly spoke of fondness and love. He was diminished, in her eyes, made mortal and ordinary, so very, very ordinary. Just a man yearning for a family and a home. Just a bastard looking for somewhere to belong.

_How could my father have fallen to this … this … mere … man?_

Even the gods had failed to defeat their ancestor Durran.

“You hated me when you thought I pitied you, but you pitied me when you saw that I loved you,” he said, when she was playing the dutiful wife and pressing a cool cloth on his fevered brow.

“It is not  _me_  you love,” she told him. “It was never me you wanted. You wanted a home, a place to belong, and you thought I could give you that.”

“Is it so wrong, to want those things?” He asked her.

Was it so wrong, to be married to a mere mortal? Even one who had slayed her father?

“ _Like us is not so bad,”_ her son had said. _Their_ son. And perhaps it was not.


End file.
